Melbourne Garden Show 2017 shifts focus from flowers to foliage

A down-to-earth approach is winning favour.

By Megan Backhouse

March 31, 2017 — 9.05pm

Nothing pinpoints our gardening aspirations more clearly than a garden show. With their stage-set trickery and catwalk perfection, these park-sized spreads are all about capturing the dreams of the time. This year's Melbourne International Flower and Garden Show, which drew more than 100,000 visitors to the Carlton Gardens and Royal Exhibition Building, was no exception. Here, we identify the key themes.

FOLIAGE OVER FLOWERS

Out were mass flower displays and in were tapestries of leaves in all textures and tones, the more dramatic the better. Think carpets of tooth-leafed banksias, spiky cycads and needle-like conifers. When it came to fruit trees, leaves took the focus away from fruit: broad and glossy in the case of citrus, graphic and deeply lobed on edible figs. It was all about green on green with splashes of grey (think Correa alba or olives) and streaks of gold (sedums and grasses). As with any foliage-based display, the emphasis was on contrasts in form and feel, with the designers mixing, matching and layering.

SUCCULENTS

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Rosette-forming agaves, golden barrels, spiny prickly pears, ridged totems – name your succulent and you were sure to find it somewhere at this year's show. The distinctive, sculptural forms of succulents, cacti in particular, gave the gardens a gritty spunk that, like the emphasis on foliage, was not dependent on the season. At Myles Baldwin's succulent-strewn garden, the look was mid-century Palm Springs, with a faux breeze-block front (constructed out of grey-painted timber). Phillip Withers' display garden, which took out the show's top prize, was more contemporary Australia, with its playful mix of native, exotic and edible plants. Tough and drought tolerant, most succulents can stand up to all sorts of neglect and can be incorporated into many gardens, including (well-lit) indoor potted ones.

CONCRETE

Exposed concrete was one of the go-to materials of the event, whether brutalist-style raw or polished and patterned. Across the show were concrete pavers, walls, roofs and bench seats and, in one particularly eye-catching twist (at the display garden by Cycas Landscape Design) a perfect, cloud-pruned camellia in a mottled, craggy concrete-tank planter.

Phillip Withers took out top prize with a playful mix of native, exotic and edible plants.Credit:Wayne Taylor

URBAN PLANTING

Thanks to their size constraints, show gardens have always yielded tips for space-poor urban gardeners. This year's prize-winning Metropolis by Candeo Design was particularly explicit in its approach. Laid out like the grid of Melbourne's CBD, the display demonstrated how plants might be used on roofs and in streets, lanes and the small, leftover spaces between buildings to provide environmental, aesthetic and social benefits.

While other gardens used roofs as planting spaces for climbers, grasses and sedums, this show garden featured trees (white cedars) atop its "buildings" – though with none of the complications of ensuring they would survive long term in a shallow substrate on such an exposed site.

Other displays, meanwhile, settled for highlighting the canopy beyond their garden, showing how all of us might frame, accentuate and generally make the most of "borrowed" greenery.

HABITAT

The presence of insect "hotels", shallow pools and bird-attracting Australian plants meant many of this year's gardens weren't designed with only people in mind.

In her prize-winning ''‘boutique garden’’' display, Emmaline Bowman made insects and animals feel at home.Credit:Wayne Taylor

In her prize-winning display (in the "boutique garden" category), Emmaline Bowman incorporated a pond with the mix of deep, middle and shallow waters critical for frogs. She also added rocks, native ground covers and decayed tree limbs to provide additional habitat, while native bees and other pollinators were accommodated in a decorative wall-frieze.

In Swinburne University of Technology's prize-winning space in the "achievable garden" category, Ross Peck, Liz Beale and Dale Johnson incorporated water, Australian plants and other habitat and food sources to encourage biodiversity.

Brent Reid with his Metropolis garden, laid out like the grid of Melbourne’s CBD.Credit:Wayne Taylor

RE-WILDING

With names such as I see Wild (Phillip Withers), Awash with Nature (by the Swinburne students), Wild at Heart (by Emmaline Bowman) and Back to Babylon (designed by Tract and featuring a cascading roof garden) it's not hard to see the common threads of introducing unfettered abundance and a naturalistic aesthetic to our increasingly urbanised environments. While the weeds and general plant mess encouraged by re-wilding advocates worldwide were not hallmarks of this year's show gardens, many highlighted how we might relax our style to bring nature back into our cities.

EXPERIMENT

Perhaps one of the best things to take away from this year's show is that in the privacy of our own gardens, we are more free to experiment and move things around. Give your ideas a try and don't be afraid to make mistakes.